


all adam wants is a kiss

by lafbaeyette



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Empathy Drunk Caleb, Fighting, M/M, Mild Language, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kiss, Sweet Kisses, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 18:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17249471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafbaeyette/pseuds/lafbaeyette
Summary: All Adam wanted to do was spend New Years Eve with his boyfriend, and of course Caleb got invited to some big New Years party with all of their old classmates.AKA, The One Where Caleb Fights For Adam's Honor, Again





	all adam wants is a kiss

**Author's Note:**

> throwing more caleb/adam fic into the void for all of us to feast upon
> 
> i literally wrote this pretty quick and low-key tipsy from my own new years celebrations but
> 
> enjoy pals

This party was already going awry.

All Adam wanted to do was spend New Years Eve with his boyfriend, who he hadn’t seen in weeks thanks to their ridiculous finals schedules and then the holidays. For whatever reason, Caleb’s dad had decided to drag the family out of town essentially the moment Caleb got back from school. They had just returned yesterday, and _of course_ Caleb got invited to some big New Years party with all of their old classmates. The last thing Adam wanted was to spend the night around some drunken has-been high school jocks, half of which were probably now college jocks.

But Caleb wanted to go, and Adam wanted to be with Caleb, and honestly as long as he got to kiss him as the clock struck midnight, it’d all be okay. That was always one of those weird, cheesy things Adam always wanted to do. Kiss someone at midnight on New Years.

All of his straight girl friends got to kiss their boyfriends, but he had never had one.

He had never had one _and_ got to spend the holiday with him. Last year was a mess, after all.

So, here they were, in the musky basement of some has-been’s parent’s house. Caleb usually stuck close at parties, he said all of the emotions and the drunkenness got to him, but Adam mellowed him out. He wasn’t close tonight, though. Adam actually lost him as soon as they walked in the door, some tall, blonde guy shouted something and tugged Caleb away by the shoulder. Adam attempted to stay with him, clung to Caleb’s hand in his, but his efforts were futile. The crowd was too thick, the jocks were too uninterested in letting Caleb’s dork of a boyfriend stick around.

Adam stuck to the walls, stood in corners and observed. He’d catch a glance of Caleb every now and then, once he even got to talk to him for three minutes before he was pulled away again. The three minutes were just full of apologies.

Once it had been over an hour since he had seen his boyfriend, Adam got a little concerned.

He started pushing his way through the throngs of people, until he came up on a group stretched out along some couches. In the floor, leaning back against the couch and cradling a blue solo cup to his chest, was Caleb. The whole place reeked of booze and weed, and it wouldn’t take an expert to realize Caleb was long gone.

“Caleb - what the fuck?”

“Adam!” The genuine joy in Caleb’s voice almost made Adam’s concern melt away, but then he felt the liquid slosh out of Caleb’s cup and onto his pants leg as the other boy moved to grab at him.

“You’ve been drinking.” Adam knelt down and took the cup from Caleb’s hand, sitting it aside. Caleb collapsed with his head in Adam’s lap, arms wrapping around his waist. “Dammit, you weren’t supposed to drink.”

“Chill out, Hayes, let the man live.” One of the jocks to his right snapped, sending the rest of the group into a fit of laughter. Adam’s face felt hot, he tried to focus on his boyfriend and not the asshole meatheads surrounding him.

“C’mon, buddy,” Adam tried to lift Caleb up, to almost no avail. Caleb was essentially deadweight, giggling deadweight that seemed to only want to cling to Adam’s shoulders or waist. “Caleb - “

“Man, who knew Michaels was such a lightweight?” A chorus of laughter.

“‘Course he is - looks like Hayes doesn’t let him have any fun.” More laughter, and Adam felt his own rage and mortification spike.

Caleb finally looked up at him, no longer needing to wade through all of the other emotions in the room, or the cheap vodka he’d been drinking. Adam was the strongest feeling in the room, and it wasn’t a good one. It felt like shame, embarrassment, and anger. It felt like sadness. Like loneliness. Like high school. It felt like how Adam used to feel, before they started dating or even talking.

Then he heard the laughter, and the continued jeers toward how Adam ‘babied’ him. Adam didn’t baby him, but god, maybe he should have. His head was swimming, he lifted himself up enough to look around the circle of drunk, laughing faces.

“Hey, shut the hell up.” This anger wasn’t his own, but he was in no state of mind to control it. Adam realized a moment too late what was happening, it finally clicked just as Caleb was throwing a sloppy punch toward the blonde that had initially dragged him away earlier, and had been throwing the most jabs at Adam. It landed across his chin, and Adam saw rage flash through the boy’s eyes.

“Shit. Caleb, stop!”

Caleb was on his feet. He had a couple of inches on the other jock, but what he may have lacked in height he had in fine motor skills. Caleb’s head snapped to the side with the responding punch, and he was washed over with fear and anxiety. Not his, he could tell that much, but Adam’s.

Adam had grabbed his arm, was attempting to pull him away and say some calming words, but it did nothing for the other boy who threw another punch Caleb’s way. He was just able to dodge, but got hit by the next.

“Guys!” “Fucking stop!” “Oh my god.”

Several people were up now, holding the other boy back and giving Adam the chance to drag Caleb away.

They stumbled through the rest of the party, up a couple sets of stairs, until they found a bathroom where Adam shut the door and Caleb collapsed against the tub.

“What the hell was that?” Adam turned on his boyfriend, the anger flared up again but it was different this time. Even drunk, Caleb could tell that this was an Angry At Caleb feeling. “You know you can’t drink - you can hardly handle being around drunk people at these things, what made you think it was a good idea to get drunk yourself?”

“‘M sorry…” Caleb muttered. Now that there was some decent space between them and the rest of the partygoers, the effects of being around them were starting to wear off. The empathy hangover was a-comin’. “If it makes you feel better, I only had, like, three drinks. Most of it was empathy drunk.”

The anger subsided, replaced with concern and a deep affection that Caleb was still getting used to feeling from him. Adam sat down in front of him, crossing his legs and taking Caleb’s hand in his own. It definitely didn’t look as bad as the last time Caleb had decked someone in Adam’s defense, but he could see a couple dark spots blooming from making contact with that boy’s chin.

“I’m sorry for tonight.” Caleb’s voice was soft and it got another wave of affection from Adam.

“You’ve gotta stop fighting people, babe.”

“I was defending your honor.” Caleb turned his hand in Adam’s, lacing their fingers. “They made you so angry… Like… The same way you felt when I first met you, they made you so angry an-and.. sad.”

“What doesn’t make me angry and sad as of late?” Adam attempted to joke, but it fell flat.

Caleb scooted closer, cupped Adam’s face with his other hand. “I’m serious, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have forced you to come - “

“You didn’t force me - “

“You came completely of your own accord?”

“Okay… you may have influenced me, but it was still my choice. I wanted to be with you.” Adam’s shoulder bounced with a half-hearted shrug. “Even if it means spending the night with a bunch of dumb jocks that hate me.”

“They don’t hate you. They don’t _know_ you.”

“And I don’t want them to. That’s not my point, my point is you don’t have to be sorry. Just don’t go punching everyone that makes me feel some kind of way, okay?”

“You thought it was hot.” Caleb had mostly been joking, trying to lighten the mood, but the sharp spark of _something_ that shot through his chest told him he wasn’t wrong. The way Adam shifted his gaze to the floor only proved his point further. “You _did_ , you totally thought me punching a guy for you was hot.”

“Of course it was hot, god, I’m not saint.” Adam met him with a serious gaze. “But that doesn’t give you permission to do it again.”

Caleb faked a pout, opened his mouth for another retort, but was cut off by both of their phones going off simultaneously. They both reached into their pockets to check.

“Message from Chloe?”

“Yeah.” Caleb couldn’t help but smile at the message, just a simple ‘Happy New Year!’ with a kissy-face emoji, but the last person that sent him a Happy New Year text was Adam last New Years. And he was the only one. It was nice to be thought of.

The clock on his phone still read 11:59, but as it turned over to 12:00, he turned his smile up to Adam. “Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Ye-“ Adam’s response was cut off by Caleb’s eager lips, and maybe it wasn’t quite the New Years Eve he expected, it was still a good one.

He got to kiss his boyfriend at midnight, and he also got to make out in a stranger’s bathroom until one in the morning on New Years Day. A strange thing to consider an accomplishment, but it was great nonetheless.


End file.
